Wholesome. Proper. Sweet. Clean. Closed door. No spice. Every one of these labels tries to describe the same thing. A story where intimacy exists but stays off the page. Readers use these terms differently, and that’s part of what makes this conversation worth having.
Christian fiction doesn’t require every character to have a biblical view of sex. It requires the story to never leave the reader wounded in their walk with Christ. That’s the real standard behind “closed door” romance.
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What “Christian Fiction” Actually Expects
Here’s where it gets tricky for Christian fiction specifically. The expectation isn’t that every character upholds a biblical view of sex within marriage. Some well-loved Christian novels include sex outside marriage, just never on the page. What readers actually expect is that the book won’t leave them uncomfortable or wounded in their walk with Christ. That’s a different bar, and a harder one to explain. It’s less about which choices a character makes and more about how the story holds those choices and carries that weight, including how it treats a character who arrives without purity behind her. What matters in those moments is how everyone around her responds, especially the Christians in her path. Their grace, or their lack of it, says as much about faith lived out as anything the character does herself.
That tension between grace and judgment doesn’t come out of nowhere. Temptation itself is real, and scripture doesn’t tiptoe around it. The command against adultery made it onto a stone tablet. That’s how significant this struggle has always been for people, in every era, not just ours.
The Real Reasons My Characters Hold Back
So when I write a character who waits, I try to give her a reason that fits who she is, not a reason that sounds like a Sunday school answer stuck onto a flannel board love story. “I’m a Christian, so I wait” can come across as pious. Sometimes downright cheesy. Real restraint has real stakes behind it. Here’s what drives my characters to hold back.
Reputation Carried Real Weight on the Frontier
A woman’s standing in a small settlement could make or break her future. One misstep followed her through every door in town. Restraint protected more than her heart. It protected the life she was trying to build.
Waiting Wasn’t About Denying Desire
It was patience for the right time, held with hope instead of shame. The wait wasn’t a wall keeping something good away. It was a promise pointing toward something worth having.
Privacy became its own form of devotion.
On the frontier, a woman’s business rarely stayed her own. Neighbors kept track of who called on whom and how often. Families asked pointed questions at church suppers. A courtship played out in full view of the town, from the first porch visit to the wedding announcement. Against that backdrop, choosing to keep the physical side of a relationship untouched wasn’t prudishness. It was one of the only things a couple could claim as fully theirs. What happened between them, and what didn’t, belonged to no one else.
No Sex on the Page Doesn’t Mean No Heat
None of this means the story is dull where the intimacy would be. A held gaze across a crowded room does its own work. A hand that lingers half a second too long says plenty. Readers still get a racing pulse from a glance held a beat too long, an unspoken confession that lands harder than any spoken one, and enough tension to keep them turning pages just to find out what happens next. No sex on the page doesn’t mean no heat. It means the heat comes from restraint instead of release, and restraint has always been one of the oldest tricks in a good love story.
Why I Write This Way
That’s the case I keep making when people ask why I don’t write explicit scenes. It was never about avoiding the subject. It’s about treating intimacy as something worth protecting rather than something to put on display. My readers get the tension, the longing, the wait. What happens after the wedding stays between the two people who earned it.
Where do you land on the wholesome-to-spice spectrum as a reader? I’d love to hear your take in the comments.
I love the tension and its promise. I don’t need explicit scenes to clutter up my mind and take me down paths I don’t need to follow. I have enough of that in my past and don’t like it in my reading. I also appreciate the lack of foul language that comes with your Christian writing. I understand that some people in the era you write about spoke irreverently, but that, too, can be left to the imagination. Thank you for your exciting plots and for keeping me reading, even when I need to get up and do something else!
💕🎉🤗🙌 I love the way you explain how precious human purity is to humans, not just to God. It’s unfortunate that in real life so many are taught that protecting our sexuality is a bad thing, something to be mocked instead of honored and praised as a choice and exercise in self-discipline and self control, celebrated as a reflection of life long habits in other areas of our lives and relationship after marriage.
Beautifully said. Thank you.
That made me laugh…I’m glad you are enjoying my books, but I hope I didn’t make dinner late!
Heidi, I just have to say that this is just one of the many reasons that I love your books. I so appreciate your stand. Christian fiction is the only genre that I read. I’m a mature adult woman, and I DO NOT want to intrude on anyone’s intimacy
You are a gem, Eileen. Thank you for sharing.
Heidi: My take , on this subject, is very much the same as your. I have always tried to live as Christ would have me live. That is not to say I always did the right thing. I was brought up in the church and have standards that I have at times failed to keep, so I respect writers who do not put temptation in the path of their readers. May God bless you and keep you safe. Mary
Thank you for these sweet6 words and blessing, Mary!
I’m not even comfortable with descriptions of passionate kissing. I definitely don’t want to read anything more. I have read books that mildly describe what happened before. I have read about parenthood before wedlock. But I don’t want to see it on the page, and I prefer books that make it known that there’s no hanky panky going on between the lines.
I’m glad you also feel it is important.